1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of electronic paper displays. More particularly, the invention relates to displaying video on electronic paper displays.
2. Description of the Background Art
Several technologies have been introduced recently that provide some of the properties of paper in a display that can be updated electronically. Some of the desirable properties of paper that this type of display tries to achieve include: low power consumption flexibility, wide viewing angle, low cost, light weight, high resolution, high contrast and readability indoors and outdoors. Because these displays attempt to mimic the characteristics of paper, these displays are referred to as electronic paper displays (EPDs) in this application. Other names for this type of display include: paper-like displays, zero power displays, e-paper, bi-stable displays and electrophoretic displays.
A comparison of EPDs to Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) displays or Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) reveals that in general, EPDs require much less power and have higher spatial resolution, but have the disadvantages of slower update rates, less accurate gray level control, and lower color resolution. Many electronic paper displays are currently only grayscale devices. Color devices are becoming available often through the addition of a color filter, which tends to reduce the spatial resolution and the contrast.
Electronic Paper Displays are typically reflective rather than transmissive. Thus they are able to use ambient light rather than requiring a lighting source in the device. This allows EPDs to maintain an image without using power. They are sometimes referred to as “bi-stable” because black or white pixels can be displayed continuously, and power is only needed when changing from one state to another. However, many EPD devices are stable at multiple states and thus support multiple gray levels without power consumption.
One type of EPD called a microencapsulated electrophoretic (MEP) display moves hundreds of particles through a viscous fluid to update a single pixel. The viscous fluid limits the movement of the particles when no electric field is applied and gives the EPD its property of being able to retain an image without power. This fluid also restricts the particle movement when an electric field is applied and causes the display to be very slow to update compared to other types of displays.
While electronic paper displays have many benefits there are a number of problems when displaying video: (1) slow update speed (also called update latency); (2) accumulated error; and (3) visibility of previously displayed images (e.g., ghosting).
The first problem is that most EPD technologies require a relatively long time to update the image as compared with conventional CRT or LCD displays. A typical LCD takes approximately 5 milliseconds to change to the correct value, supporting frame rates of up to 200 frames per second (the achievable frame rate is typically limited by the ability of the display driver electronics to modify all the pixels in the display). In contrast, many electronic paper displays, e.g. the E Ink displays, take on the order of 300-1000 milliseconds to change a pixel value from white to black. While this update time is generally sufficient for the page turning needed by electronic books, it is a significant problem for interactive applications with user interfaces and the display of video.
When displaying a video or animation, each pixel should ideally be at the desired reflectance for the duration of the video frame, i.e. until the next requested reflectance is received. However, every display exhibits some latency between the request for a particular reflectance and the time when that reflectance is achieved. If a video is running at 10 frames per second (which is already reduced since typical video frame rates for movies are 30 frames a second) and the time required to change a pixel is 10 milliseconds, the pixel will display the correct reflectance for 90 milliseconds and the effect will be as desired. If it takes 100 milliseconds to change the pixel, it will be time to change the pixel to another reflectance just as the pixel achieves the correct reflectance of the prior frame. Finally, if it takes 200 milliseconds for the pixel to change, the pixel will never have the correct reflectance except in the circumstance where the pixel was very near the correct reflectance already, i.e. slowly changing imagery. Thus, EPDs have not been used to display video.
The second problem is accumulated error. As different values are applied to drive different pixels to different optical output levels, errors are introduced depending on the particular signals or waveforms applied to the pixel to move it from one particular optical state to another. This error tends to accumulate over time. A typical prior are solution would be to drive all the pixels to black, then to white, then back to black. However, with video this cannot be done because there isn't time with 10 or more frames per second, and since there are many more transitions in optical state for video, this error accumulates to the point where it is visible in the video images produced by the EPD.
The third problem is related to update latency in that often there are not enough frames to set some pixels to their desired gray level. This produces visible video artifacts during playback, particularly in the high motion video segments. Similarly, there is not enough contrast in the optical image produced by the EPD because there is not time between frames to drive the pixels to the proper optical state where there is contrast between pixels. This also relates to the characteristics of EPD where near the ends of the pixel values, black and white, the displays require more time to transition between optical states, e.g., different gray levels.